


please don’t say you love me

by Anonymous



Category: Shingeki no Kyojin | Attack on Titan
Genre: F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-21
Updated: 2018-07-21
Packaged: 2019-06-14 03:04:32
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,235
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15379299
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/
Summary: Krista is fifteen. Krista is an adult. Krista is a soldier.She has got far more important things to worry about than the way Ymir looks at her.





	please don’t say you love me

Historia has never been a child. Not really, anyway.

(But then again, who was?)

No one is happy when she is born.

She's an accident, an inconvenience, a horrible mistake.

Her formative years are spent entirely isolated in an estate that's crumbling both inside and out, and the loneliness sets in her bones. Her only friends are the animals, and in later years, her commanding officer will joke about how it sounds like a lazily-written children's bedtime story.

She has a mother who can't bare to look her in the eyes, and a father whom she's not yet had the misfortune of meting, and she is so desperately lonely she feels like it's eating her alive.

(The first thing her mother ever says to her is that she wishes she was brave enough to kill her, and sometimes - all the time - Historia wishes she had. No one would miss her.)

//

Aged just ten, she watches, helpless, as her mother is murdered, her last words: "If only you'd never been born."

As her body falls hard on the road, she know she will be executed too.

(Soon her suffering will end.)

She takes a breath, because it might be her last, and stares grimly up at dear old dad, expecting to feel the sharp blade, still dripping with her mother's blood, on her throat any second. At least her death will be quick, although she doesn’t deserve it.

Her life doesn’t end that night.

Instead, she gets a new name, and with it, she takes on a new identity.

Krista Lenz will be kind, Krista Lenz will be sweet, Krista Lenz will be everything she is not.

Only, Krista Lenz will die.

And those who knew Krista Lenz will mourn her. They will say her death is tragic, heartbreaking, and they will cry at her funeral. They won't hate her for her mere existence. She will twist herself into what everyone thinks a perfect person should be.

Historia will make damn sure of it.

//

Krista Lenz is beautiful, charming, kind.

Indeed, she is everything Historia wanted her to be.

All of her fellow trainees like her, and they enjoy her company.

Well, all but one.

There's a tall girl who Historia think seems far too tall and far too wild to be a trainee, who reprimands her for performing an act of kindness. 

"What the hell do you think your doing?!" The girl hisses, glaring at Krista, then at Sasha, who has collapsed from exhaustion in her lap.

"I'm giving her food, obviously.” Krista’s voice is colder than Historia intended.

The girl rolls her (pretty) brown eyes. "And what made you think that was a good idea?"

"Because, if I don't help them, who will?"

The girl gives an exasperated sigh, and helps Krista as they scoop poor Sasha off of your lap. "Well, I will. It means they'll owe me a favour."

It's only as the pair of them are trudging their way back to the dorms, half carrying and half dragging Sasha between them, when the girl asks for her name.

"My name is Krista Lenz." Historia likes how easily this new name (new lie) rolls off of her tongue.

The girl smirks, and Historia wonders what she's thinking. "I'm Ymir."

//

Historia begins to see a lot of Ymir over the coming months.

They fight together in hand to hand combat.

(Krista wins only a handful of times - she is too small, too malnourished - but Historia will never let Ymir live it down.)

Krista sits beside her as she learns of a Titans' fatal flaw, much to Jean’s dismay.

(Her eyes are so wide and her fists are clenched. Historia places a comforting hand on her shoulder, and, for once, she doesn't brush her away.)

Historia doesn’t really notice at first, but over time, she begins to relax a bit more when she is with Ymir, and Historia starts to become less of Krista Lenz, and more of the girl she once was. The girl she wanted to be.

(Ymir's different from the others, though, because she sees straight through Krista’s shiny smiles, and it's only a matter of time before she discovers who Krista really is.)

//

It all happens so fast.

Krista and Ymir are trudging through the snowy mountains, and it's freezing.

Historia knows this is it, this is how she is going to die. But she doesn’t want to drag Ymir down with her.

She advises (demands) her to leave.

Suddenly, Ymir begins to bring up things she really should not know, and then her cover is blown, and she just wants to die, like she should've done all those years ago.

Ymir is yelling about something, but Historia can't hear her over the sound of her own heartbeat, and before she can stop herself she screams.

"What would you have done?! If anyone finds out the truth about me, I'm dead. This is the only way!" She doesn’t cry, not yet, it’s too cold and there is anger she has kept pent up for years sizzling through your veins. "Besides, I'd rather die on my own terms, fighting to keep our world a safer place!"

"If you really think being chewed up by some Titian is gonna keep our world safer, you’re as brainwashed as the rest of them." Ymir isn't yelling, not anymore, voice dropped into a harsh whisper.

"You still haven't answered my question." Historia counters furiously.

"Honestly? I have no idea." Ymir admits. “But I’m not you.”

Ymir learns a lot about her that night, and in the end, maybe it's for the better.

(Historia still doesn’t tell Ymir her real name, and she hopes she will never have to.)

//

Krista is fifteen. Krista is an adult. Krista is a soldier.

She has got far more important things to worry about than the way Ymir looks at her.

(Like her reputation, and keeping her real identity a secret, and, oh, did she forget to mention the giant man-eating monsters baying for her blood? Yeah, those too.)

Only, once in a while, Ymir will look at her in a certain way, that she can't quite define.

Honestly, she isn’t quite sure she can define how she feels about her, either.

She knows that she likes spending free time with her, she likes training with her, and she especially likes it when their hands accidentally brush against one another and she get butterflies in your stomach.

She wonders if this is what it feels like to be in love.

(Historia hopes it's nothing, because everyone she loves always ends up dead.)

On their graduation day, Ymir's the one who kisses her first.

She’s a bit taken aback, of course, and she isn’t quite sure what to do with your hands, but she kisses her back, regardless.

She closes her eyes, and allows herself to live in this moment, with Ymir's hands in her hair, and wishes with all her might that they could stay here forever.

(They can't, obviously, because people like her don't get wishes granted.)

Ymir loves her and Historia loves her, and together, they wait for the world to end.

But Historia doesn’t mind, so much, as long as Ymir is with her.

Ymir is her hope, her courage, her bravery.

And she’s going to need all of it and more, in the days ahead.

(Because nothing lasts forever, and she knows that better than anyone.)

**Author's Note:**

> ...i miss ymir more than anything


End file.
